“No need at all. A letter from me to the
Municipality, and the Municipality will confirm you
at once. No need to move from here. In
a fortnight at most the thing can be accomplished.
It is settled, then?”
Andre-Louis considered yet a moment. There was
his academy. But he could make arrangements
with Le Duc and Galoche to carry it on for him whilst
himself directing and advising. Le Duc, after
all, was become a thoroughly efficient master, and
he was a trustworthy fellow. At need a third
assistant could be engaged.
“Be it so,” he said at last.
Le Chapelier clasped hands with him and became congratulatorily
voluble, until interrupted by the red-coated giant
at the door.
“What exactly does it mean to our business,
anyway?” he asked. “Does it mean
that when you are a representative you will not scruple
to skewer M. le Marquis?”
“If M. le Marquis should offer himself to be
skewered, as he no doubt will.”
“I perceive the distinction,” said M.
Danton, and sneered. “You’ve an
ingenious mind.” He turned to Le Chapelier.
“What did you say he was to begin with —
a lawyer, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I was a lawyer, and afterwards a mountebank.”
“And this is the result!”
“As you say. And do you know that we are
after all not so dissimilar, you and I?”
“What?”
“Once like you I went about inciting other people
to go and kill the man I wanted dead. You’ll
say I was a coward, of course.”
Le Chapelier prepared to slip between them as the
clouds gathered on the giant’s brow. Then
these were dispelled again, and the great laugh vibrated
through the long room.
“You’ve touched me for the second time,
and in the same place. Oh, you can fence, my
lad. We should be friends. Rue des Cordeliers
is my address. Any — scoundrel will
tell you where Danton lodges. Desmoulins lives
underneath. Come and visit us one evening.
There’s always a bottle for a friend.”
THE SPADASSINICIDES
After an absence of rather more than a week, M. le
Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr was back in his place
on the Cote Droit of the National Assembly.
Properly speaking, we should already at this date allude
to him as the ci-devant Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr,
for the time was September of 1790, two months after
the passing — on the motion of that downright
Breton leveller, Le Chapelier — of the decree
that nobility should no more be hereditary than infamy;
that just as the brand of the gallows must not defile
the possibly worthy descendants of one who had been
convicted of evil, neither should the blazon advertising
achievement glorify the possibly unworthy descendants
of one who had proved himself good. And so the
decree had been passed abolishing hereditary nobility
and consigning family escutcheons to the rubbish-heap
